Today’s weather will be very similar to yesterday’s, with temperatures warming up rapidly after a chilly start. Just a few clouds overhead, with highs reaching the mid to upper 60s:

Another wave of cooler air heads in for the first half of the weekend. Temperatures Saturday will start off near-average, in the upper 30s to around 40°:
But we won’t warm up too much, topping out near 60°:

Another frosty start Sunday morning, then highs Sunday and Monday will reach the mid to upper 60s. No rain in sight until a slight chance of showers Tuesday and Tuesday night.

We’re now exactly six inches below our normal year-to-date rainfall:
By the end of the 7-day forecast, it will have been exactly two months since Nashville officially had a one-inch rain event…it’s been 225 days for Chattanooga! (One inch of rain is an arbitrary-but-useful threshold to identify a “soaking rain.”) That’s a record for Chattanooga, but not for Nashville…not even close. The longest streak of “days with less than 1 inch of rain” was in 1871 and 1872 — 260 straight days! That’s at the very beginning of Nashville record-keeping, so I’m a little skeptical as to the accuracy of that data…the second-longest streak was in 1956, when 219 days went by without a one-inch rainfall. One more bit of trivia — earlier this year, we went 94 straight days without a one-inch soaking rain.

After the strong El Nino episode in the Pacific last winter, a weak La Nina is now officially here for the next few months. (I took a look at La Nina’s potential impact on our winter weather in this post from last month.)

Our chilly weather the past couple of mornings isn’t out of the ordinary at all for this time of the year…nationwide, there are just no signs of winter on the horizon.

Astronomers had always assumed that our solar system was “normal” — rocky planets close in to the star, larger gaseous planets farther out. Now that assumption is being challenged by a flood of new evidence.

2 Responses to November 11: Pleasant Veterans Day, Daily Links

And some more trivia: the lack of rain this fall is in stark contrast to the summer. It was the 8th wettest summer with 17.17 in of rain (the record is 19.88” set in 1928), while the fall so far is the 2nd driest (2.31”). The difference has never been greater (or equaled for that matter) between summer and fall of the same year. Besides the quantity, the difference in frequency of rainfall is also record-setting. There were 38 days of measurable precipitation June through August, which is tied for 3rd most since 1880s (the most for summer is 48 days set in 1883). Since August 27 there have only been 10 days with significant rainfall. The fewest days with precipitation September through November is 11, which occurred in 1953 (the year when Middle Tennessee experienced probably its most severe drought on record). Of course, the fall season is not over yet, and there are some chances of rain in the forecast, but the numbers are still impressive. So, in hindsight, we should be thankful for the rainy summer, otherwise the drought would have been disastrous by now. Incidentally, this is the worst drought in Nashville since 2007 (water is already being rationed in some counties like it was that year).

260 days without a “soaking rain” does seem rather extreme for Nashville. Early climate records contain data that appear improbable. Here’s another one that’s particularly hard to believe: in 1885 we had 65 (!) days in a row with precipitation (from Sep 10 through Nov 13). Even though most of those were days with trace amounts, that still sounds far-fetched. Officially, our record for most days with measurable precipitation is 15 (Jun 27 – Jul 11, 1912). However, it should be noted that 1880s were overall very rainy, most of the years from that decade among the wettest on record. A century later, the situation would be reversed: Nashville had four of its driest years in a row: 1985-1988. Ok, that’s it for the precipitation trivia for the day.